Tag: Jim Benning

For the sake of sensation, readership, listenership or worse, filling an agenda against a General Manager whom some can’t stand and want fired, there are individuals both in the media and amongst a fan base who will take a rumour and make it sound like a fact. Why? Because it fits their agenda when they have an axe to grind, and/or it makes for good publicity for them.

A typical example of that came out this past week when Elliott Friedman, in his 31 Thoughts: The Podcast, made the following statement:

“There was a chance that the Canucks would get P.K. Subban but the problem was that Pierre-Luc Dubois was not going to fall to Vancouver’s pick, because Montreal knew that Columbus was going to take him. If Montreal believed that Dubois was going to be available at five, P.K. Subban could have been a Vancouver Canucks.”

That’s all Friedman said on the podcast. Well someone, somewhere – including danslescoulisses.com – brought back a Friedman article from June 24, 2016 and presented it as current. In the translation, they insinuate that Marc Bergevin declined an offer from Canucks’ GM Jim Benning which would have included Bo Horvat, Chris Tanev and the fifth overall pick for Subban. It didn’t take more for the vultures to take this false news and run with it and unfortunately, because they presented it as facts, people believed it.

However, as few reporters do in today’s day and age, someone by the name of Jeff Veillemette went straight to the source and pulled out Friedman’s 2016 30 Thoughts.

Puck Prose says that the Tanev+Horvat part came from a June 2016 article. To me, that looks like Elliotte speculating on a fair price, not him reporting an offer. My best interpretation (not 100%) would be that the offer @FriedgeHNIC referred to today was just the 1st round pick. pic.twitter.com/7N7YpvGbHR

You see the difference? There is no way that Benning would be crazy enough to offer that package for Subban and Bergevin being stupid enough to decline it. If anything, it might be what the Canadiens were asking the Canucks for Subban, had Dubois fallen to number five overall… but I’m convinced that Vancouver wouldn’t have done it.

The morale of the story is that before jumping to conclusions, get to the source folks and beware of those who have a #FireBergevin hashtag in their tweets. Chances are that they will believe anything and everything, even twisting things to make them fit their agenda, and they will present them as facts. Now if someone brings this up again, you can point them to this article. Go Habs Go!